Friday, January 11, 2013

Braised chicken with chestnuts // Frango braseado com castanhas

I'm so excited! This month's Foodie Penpals parcel arrived yesterday and I'm dying to tell you about all the goodies I'm privileged to be working with. But I know, I know, MUST... WAIT...

Lucky me it's the weekend again, so there's plenty of other things to focus on.

To start off this afternoon, I made a creamy vanilla ice cream - but I'll tell you about it later. Then I moved on to prepare dinner. This evening the menu at home was braised chicken with chestnuts.

Helping to make the season bright.

First I seasoned 2 chicken breasts, cut in smaller portions, with half a tablespoon of salt, 1/4 of a tablespoon of pepper, 3 tablespoons of olive oil and half a tablespoon of corn starch. I let it sit for half an hour.

Then I covered the bottom of a pan with olive oil generously and added the chicken and 5 sliced garlic cloves, and let it cook in high heat so the chicken would get a golden colour.

As soon as I was pleased with the colour of the chicken, I removed it from the pan, lowered the heat, and added 4 tablespoons of tomato sauce (it might have been more) and - here's the kicker - the content of a 50ml bottle of Quinta do Infantado White Port wine.

Is it just me, or can you see an Olympics-like symbol here as well?

Then I added a portion of frozen chestnuts (which had been covered for about 5 minutes in warmed water) and let it cook in the pan in low heat with the lid on for about 15 minutes.

Finally, I put the chicken back in the pan and let it simmer for another 15 minutes. I served it with store-bought green purée ("esparregado"), as you can see in the first picture.